B&S Travels: Inhabitants of the Rain Forest

If you want to see a bigger version of any picture, double click on the picture.

We wake each morning wondering if it will be raining in the rain forest. If we considered rain as a curse, we'd be in Costa Rica in October or March or April, it's three dry months. Rain is a small nuisance at worst.

This could have been the beach Christopher Columbus landed on in 1502, 10 years after his controversial finding of America in 1492. No controversy concerning Costa Rica - he was the first from Europe to cross the Atlantic and find this Central America country. Columbus discovered it on his 4th and last voyage to the new world. He didn't like the weather nor the malaria and yellow fever that Costa Rica had to offer and he sailed back to Spain after a short two week stay. This statute of him landing on this coast is all that commemorates his historic landing.

The focus of today's adventure was about present day Costa Rica and some of the flora and fauna that thrives here especially along their rivers.

Notice the sky is looking very friendly. This picture was taken from a rickety old open air train on the second leg of our tour.

This country and it's rain forest offer many edibles. The crop of the day was bananas.

I'm sure you are wondering if the blue bags are litter or have purpose. It turns out they are protecting the banana crop. BTW, the color blue is used because unlike the colors yellow, red, and orange, it is not a color that attracts insects, animals, and others that like to eat bananas.

This is the male banana flower that I tried without success to capture with my camera in the wild. It's impressive for its size and color.

The very special part of the day was our boat tour on one of the rivers. We happily volunteered to captain what I called the SS Minnow.

With little or no support, we happily chose to watch for critters. The captain and interpreter were excellent at finding plenty of them to shoot with my iPhone 12.

This sloth was seen after leaving the dock and seemed incredible based on the fact that they live high in the trees most of the time. They are known to come down only once a week to pee and poop. You will more clearly see his face if you enlarge the picture by double clicking the picture. Our guide was beside herself because it's not common to see them on this tour. And not only did we see one sloth, we saw a total of five.

But, on our trip we saw something very unusual - a sloth swimming across the small river. Our boat was in his way and as he approached our boat, he grabbed hold of a rope dangling from the SS Minnow, and the captain hauled him aboard on the forward deck.

Sammy the Sloth was added to the list of ship guests. He is a three toed sloth versus a two toed sloth, in case you are interested.

All the passengers were very happy and excited that he joined us. Our captain and guide bragged about our unexpected guest. Lots of excitement about one of the slowest moving mammals! We loved it!!

I could show you lots of pictures of birds we saw along the river. Due to the Costa Rican protection of their rain forests, it has the most bird species in Central and North America and Europe. That's a nice accomplishment.